All that jazz: The origin story 

 

Editor’s note: Our classical music encyclopedia, Narendra Kusnur, has been writing fun, accessible guides to Western classical music and how they’ve shaped popular culture for a while. This month, he switches up the tempo and adds some skibidi-doo-bop to it, taking us through the history of jazz music in America, or ‘jass’ as it was first known. The many contenders who’ve claimed to have birthed this mercurial sound, and the many films it has found a home in. As always, we’ve put all the music referenced in the article in a YouTube playlist for you to enjoy.

 

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In 2019, filmmaker Dan Pritzker released Bolden, the biopic of the legendary jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden. Gary Carr played the musician, and Reno Wilson acted as the great jazzman Louis Armstrong. Noted trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis created the music.

 

Bolden had an interesting but tragic story. He was described by contemporaries and later jazz scholars as the key figure in the development of the New Orleans style of ragtime music, or jass, which later came to be known as jazz. He was thus credited for “inventing the music that became jazz”, as musicologist Alyn Shipton put it. He was at his peak from 1900 to 1907, but had to be admitted to an asylum after suffering from alcoholic psychosis and dementia praecox or schizophrenia. He spent the rest of his life at the institute, where he died in 1931 at the age of 54.

 

Bolden’s music was recorded on cylinders but none survived. Other musicians carried forward his work. While his biopic is available on YouTube, let’s watch its trailer, and also play a piece called ‘Come On Children’ from the film to hear how Marsalis recreated his music.

 

How did jazz evolve after Bolden? Let’s look at the early days of the genre, winding up by the end of the 1920s, when the Great Depression began in 1929.

 

While Bolden is said to have paved the way for jazz, the actual term was originally applied to the music developed in New Orleans more than a decade after his peak. Though jazz was initially the product of the city’s African American community, it was picked up by whites in the region and even other parts of America. The spread became faster when musicians began to record, thus reaching a wider audience.

 

Jazz by itself isn’t an isolated form, as its elements can be traced to other cultures. The rhythm structures and call-and-response patterns originated in Africa. The harmonies had European influences. But the end result was entirely American, also drawing from Afro-American blues and ragtime styles. Early ‘jass’ was even called traditional, and the term Dixieland was used by some white practitioners, ‘Dixie’ being the nickname of the southern United States. The Original Dixieland Jass Band was the first to record in 1917, with ‘Livery Stable Blues’, facing accusations that they blindly copied a tune created by Black musicians. They called themselves the creators of jazz, and changed the spelling in their title.

 

By the 1920s, numerous musicians and bands played this style and the term jass was replaced by jazz. The sound was more raw, and the instruments flowed into one another. As an example, here’s a mid-1920s recording by the Halfway House Orchestra of New Orleans.

 

Liked the sound? The track ‘New Orleans Shuffle’ was a composition typical of the area, known for collective improvisation and syncopation, which involves playing a variety of rhythms together. At a very basic level, a few things distinguished jazz from European classical music, besides the regions of origin. One obvious difference was that while the latter involved playing pre-written compositions without any changes, jazz musicians resorted to improvisation. The other was the choice of instruments. Though the piano was common to both styles, classical emphasised on violins, cellos, flutes, bassoon and harp, whereas in the early days, jazz used the cornet, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and clarinet. Needless to say, classical was a much older form.

 

Jazz music of the 1920s had an impact on the popular culture of its time. The imposition of Prohibition in the early 1920s, and the rise of jazz, made the genre turn into both a musical and cultural phenomenon. In his famous 1925 book The Great Gatsby, author F Scott Fitzgerald referred to the decade as the Jazz Age. The 1927 film The Jazz Singer, the first feature film with both synchronised recorded music and lip-synced singing and speech, talks of a Jewish man who rebels against his family to become a jazz singer. Let’s look at two songs set in the Jazz Age—‘The Very Thought of You’, composed by Ray Noble and sung by Al Bowlly in 1934 and used in the 1974 Robert Redford film The Great Gatsby, and ‘Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet’, featuring Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer.

 

 

Following the popularity of jazz, some musicians began to be noticed for their contributions. Among the early legends were pianist and bandleader Jelly Roll Morton, cornetists Freddie Keppard and King Oliver, saxophonist Sidney Bechet, and pianist-singer Lillian Hardin, a pioneer among female jazz musicians. Morton also claimed to have invented jazz, though his statement was opposed. He had in fact published his tune ‘Jelly Roll Blues’ in 1915 and played it live, but recorded it much later in 1926. Let’s listen to the track.

 

Keppard is known to have been offered the chance to record much before the Original Dixieland Jass Band, but he turned down the offer fearing recordings would allow others to steal his ideas. King Oliver was known to mentor both Louis Armstrong and Lillian Hardin, who later got married. Sidney Bechet was one of the first important soloists in jazz, and excelled on the soprano saxophone and clarinet. Let’s listen to ‘Snake Rag’ by King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, recorded in 1923, and from the same year, ‘Shreveport Blues’ by Sidney Bechet and the Blue Five.

 

 

While these musicians paved the way for things to come, the 1920s kicked off the careers of three of the biggest names in jazz. Let’s briefly look at each separately, focusing only on their work in that decade.

 

Louis Armstrong is often associated with the song ‘What a Wonderful World’, though he recorded it much later, in 1967. Raised in New Orleans, the trumpeter and vocalist was also nicknamed ‘Satchmo’, ‘Satch’, and ‘Pops’. After beginning his career in New Orleans, he moved to Chicago at the insistence of King Oliver. The two played a lot together, but parted ways in 1924. He then joined pianist Fletcher Henderson’s band, before forming his own group the Hot Five (later the Hot Seven) on the advice of his wife Lillian Hardin. He recorded hits like ‘West End Blues’, ‘Muggles’ and ‘Potato Head Blues’, whose 1927 recording we shall hear. Let’s also watch a clip from Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan where he mentions ‘Potato Head Blues’ as one of the things that makes life worth living.

 

 

Interestingly, Armstrong was one of the first to record a scat portion (singing nonsensical syllables) on the track ‘Heebie Jeebies’. Though others had been scatting earlier in shows, legend has it that Armstrong did an impromptu scat improvisation after dropping his lyrics sheet while recording. Here’s the song.

 

Along with Armstrong, it’s also natural to mention Washington-bred Duke Ellington, the pianist and bandleader who is regarded as one of the greatest figures in jazz. Though his big hits ‘Mood Indigo’, ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing’, and ‘Sophisticated Lady’ were released in the early 1930s, he had been playing throughout the 1920s. Two of his biggest hits from that period, played below, were ‘Creole Love Call’ and ‘Black And Tan Fantasy’ from 1927. His residency at New York’s Cotton Club in the late 1920s established him as a bandleader, and he soon became one of the biggest names in the genre.

 

 

We conclude the Jazz Age star club with the legendary New York composer George Gershwin. His name immediately brings to mind his most famous song ‘Summertime’, recorded and sung by zillions of singers, both famous and wannabe. He wrote it in 1935 for the opera ‘Porgy and Bess’. But he had his first hit much earlier, in 1919, with ‘Swanee’, associated most with singer Al Jolson. Here’s what it sounded like.

 

Gershwin’s music spanned jazz, popular, and classical music. His 1924 piece ‘Rhapsody In Blue’ is one of those compositions that defined the Jazz Age, and ‘Embraceable You’ (1928) became a standard. In fact, ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ was used as a background to the opening sequence of Woody Allen’s Manhattan (obviously, Woody loved his jazz). We watch that scene, followed by the ravishing Judy Garland’s rendition of ‘Embraceable You’ in the 1943 movie Girl Crazy. One can also look for his biopic Rhapsody in Blue, released in 1945 with Robert Alda playing the great composer. Gershwin died in 1937 at the age of 38, leaving behind a huge body of work.

 

 

By the turn of the decade, a new style of jazz had become popular. It incorporated elements of dance music into jazz. The Swing Era was about to begin, and by the early 1930s, it had swept America. The sounds, they were a-changin’.

 

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Finally, like we always conclude the column, here’s a list of tunes we have mentioned.

 

Wynton Marsalis – 'Come on Children', from the film Bolden

Original Dixieland Jass Band – 'Livery Stable Blues'

Halfway House Orchestra – 'New Orleans Shuffle'

Ray Noble & Al Bowlly – 'The Very Thought of You'

Al Jolson – 'Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet', from the film The Jazz Singer

Jelly Roll Morton – 'Jelly Roll Blues'

King Oliver & the Creole Jazz Orchestra – 'Snake Rag'

Sidney Bechet & the Blue Five – 'Shreveport Blues'

Louis Armstrong – 'Potato Head Blues'

Louis Armstrong – 'Heebie Jeebies'

Duke Ellington – 'Creole Love Call'

Duke Ellington – 'Black and Tan Fantasy'

George Gershwin & Al Jolson – 'Swanee'

George Gershwin – 'Rhapsody In Blue'

George Gershwin & Judy Garland – 'Embraceable You' in the film Girl Crazy

 

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Narendra Kusnur has been a music journalist for over 40 years—including a decade-long stint covering the beat at the Mid-Day newspaper. He currently writes for The Hindu, Free Press Journal, Hindustan Times, and Rolling Stone India—besides the in-house magazines of prestigious institutions—such as NCPA and Shanmukhananda Hall.